History of The Ryukyu Islands - Notables

Notables

• Uechi Kanbun was the founder of Uechi-ryū, one of the primary karate styles of Okinawa
• Mitsuru Ushijima was the Japanese general at the Battle of Okinawa, during the final stages of World War II.
• Isamu Chō was an officer in the Imperial Japanese Army known for his support of ultranationalist politics and involvement in a number of attempted military and right-wing coup d'etats in pre-World War II Japan.
• Ota Minoru was an admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II, and the final commander of the Japanese naval forces defending the Oroku Peninsula during the Battle of Okinawa.
• Sato Eisaku was a Japanese politician and the 61st, 62nd and 63rd Prime Minister of Japan. During his premier days, Okinawa was returned to Japan.
• Yabu Kentsu) was a prominent teacher of Shōrin-ryū karate in Okinawa from the 1910s until the 1930s, and was among the first people to demonstrate karate in Hawaii.
• Takuji Iwasaki was a Japanese meteorologist, biologist, ethnologist historian.
• Ernest Taylor Pyle was an American journalist who wrote as a roving correspondent for the Scripps Howard newspaper chain from 1935 until his death in combat during World War II. He died in IeJima, Okinawa.
• Lieutenant-General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr. was killed during the closing days of the Battle of Okinawa by enemy artillery fire, making him the highest-ranking US military officer to have been killed by enemy fire during World War II.